On Friday, New Hampshire got rid of its parental notification law. Good for New Hampshire (although effectively this doesn't change anything--the law had never been enforced because of a court challenge). The issue at stake was that it didn't contain any health provision; thankfully the Governor of New Hampshire is somewhat more humane than five of the current Supreme Court Justices.

But the real reason I'm posting this is to draw attention to a quotation in the article that gets to the heart of one of the central issues about abortion legislation. Reactionary Republican party chairman

Actually, Mr. Cullen, no. He's not saying that. He's saying that there is a difference between "should"--yes, of course girls ought to talk to their parents about unwanted pregnancies--and "must."

Which is the gist of abortion legislation, in a nutshell. We can all sit around all day thinking of things other people should, or shouldn't, do. I think people shouldn't drive when they can walk. But, you know, we oughta think through the ethics and consequences of making our personal shoulds into law. Ethically, it's pretty fundamental that pregnancy is an imposition and sacrifice, that human DNA is not a "baby," and that a woman isn't just a mason jar--her body is doing the necessary work to turn human DNA *into* a baby, and inasmuch as forced servitude is morally wrong, trying to pass laws to force women to use their bodies to produce children is wrong. Period.

But those who can't quite grasp that concept should, at least, be able to think a little bit about the practical consequences of trying to control fundamental and involuntary human activities through legislation. For instance, contrast the situation in Mississippi, where there's one abortion clinic, a two-parent notification requirement, a 24-hour waiting period, and abortion's illegal after the 12th week--with the situation in, oh, say, Nepal. (Both links are to Salon, so you may have to watch an ad to read 'em.) I, for one, didn't even know I was pregnant until I was about 12 weeks along--I can't be bothered to track my stupid periods every month, we were using condoms, and time flies when you're having fun. And I wasn't a teenage girl (young women often have pretty irregular periods), or using a form of contraception that messes up your cycle. But I believe I *did* have some spotting in the first month--which isn't unusual--which I mistook for a period. So anyhoo, in Mississippi I would have been shit out of luck, especially if I'd had to add to not figuring it out needing to get up the guts to tell both my parents, track down one of 'em if he weren't around, save money and schedule time off to travel to Jackson, and wait around for 24 hours in order to go through with the procedure.

Which is of course the point, and yay Mississippi, more poor and young women are surely having babies they can't support and don't want as a result.

But, as Nepal's finding out, one consequence of trying to make abortion go away by making it "illegal" is that women who can't support and don't want children . . . will go ahead and try to abort anyway. After all, it's their damn body, and unless you're willing to put all childbearing women under constant surveillance, we're going to be able to do what we want with our bodies. And Nepal's figured out that, in the absence of competent medical help, that's gonna mean people dying.

But most people don't really want to put women under constant surveillance, and in fact most pro-lifers don't really want to make abortion illegal--they just want to make it impossible to get, because they think that doing so will somehow make it go away. Hence the logic that doctors should be controlled and burdened with legislation and the threat of jail, combined with the reluctance to recognize that if abortion = murder, women ought to go to jail. And of course, most attempts to legislate abortion operate on this principle--the threat of punishment is against the provider who doesn't obtain both parents' signatures, or who doesn't require the 24-hour waiting period, etc.

Which works because the provider isn't the one that's pregnant, and therefore is truly in a position to "choose" between performing an abortion or going to jail. Pregnancy not being a choice--which is to say, it isn't something one decides to do through conscious action, y'know; it just kinda happens--women aren't really able to "choose" to continue a pregnancy.

Not unless we can choose not to.

Bitch_PhD doesn't really want to deal with the inevitable argument that women can too choose to become pregnant. No; they can choose to try to become pregnant--but whether or not they do so isn't up to them. Otherwise there would be no infertility, and no need for birth control.